Cancer is an uncontrolled growth of abnormal cells in various parts of the body. Presently cancer may be treated by surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy, immunotherapy, etc, with varying degrees of success. However, surgical therapy cannot completely remove extensively transferred tumor cells. Radiotherapy and chemotherapy do not have sufficient selectivity to kill cancer cells in the presence of rapidly proliferating normal cells. Immunotherapy is largely limited to the use of cytokines or therapeutic cancer vaccines. Cytokines may cause serious toxicity and continuous use of vaccines may lead to immune tolerance.
Therefore, there is need for exploring alternative routes of treatment.
Rho/Rho kinase signaling pathway is an ubiquitous signaling pathway in human body. By functioning as a signal converter or a molecular switch in cellular signal transduction pathways, it acts on the cytoskeleton or the target protein, thereby inducing actin cytoskeleton rearrangement and regulating gene transcription and cell cycle. However, there is no known method or agent that treats cancer via regulating the Rho/Rho kinase signal pathway.